Sunday, June 12, 2016

TROLLING HILLARY; THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

If there's anyone that deserves to be trolled it's Hillary. Given her uncanny ability to dodge the facts and obsessively lie about everything and anything she is accused of being guilty of there's no way to take her on but to drop down to a level that she operates on.

An example of how nasty Hillary and the Establishment that supports is, is how Bernie has been treated; going as far as even using Obama and Warren to try and crush the movement he represents.

A recent photo on the front page of the LA Times (owned and operated by corporate goons) says it all. You know what they say about a picture being worth a 1,000 words.

A tired - beaten old man being escorted out the door by a tired and badly bruised black man who is desperate to save what little there is of a legacy battered by the Establishment; both right and left.

The media; bought and operated by the Billionaires and Millionaires Bernie scoffs at are consistently hard at work creating images that depict Sanders as a lost cause; and they are very good at it.

These insidious forces are frightened of the Bernie supporters because they are mad up of the youngest and the brightest America has to offer and are way to informed and tech-savvy to be easily swayed. These pumped up Millennials want a future they can believe in an it's certainly not what Hillary and the Establishment are dishing up.

The powerful and far-reaching presence the Bernie Sanders campaign has on social media, and the enthusiasm of young Sanders supporters online, many of whom have been labeled trolls, “Bernie Bros,” “BernieBots,” and — more egregiously — sexists and racists by Democratic partisans and the corporate media over the past year. Sanders has such a passionate online base that David Brock and the Clinton campaign felt it necessary not only to pay legitimate trolls to attack them, but to make bogus generalizations intended to discredit the entire movement.

Throughout the primary season, a narrative has formed — thanks in large part to an uncritical media’s willingness to accept unsubstantiated reports (like chair-throwing and other violence in Nevada) — that Sanders supporters are a bunch of sexist, brutish, violent, and even racist white male trolls and serial harassers (the last charge, which has been exploited by influential journalists and establishment figures to evade any substantive criticisms, is perhaps the most troubling, for the very reason that it undermines people who are genuinely harassed online — which is a very real problem, especially for women and people of color).

Of course, there are indeed anti-Clinton/pro-Bernie trolls on social media — you’d be hard pressed to find any political movement that doesn’t have its share of trolls and assholes, and anyone who thinks their side is troll-free is either naive or self-absorbed. As The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald recently put it on Twitter: “Self-centered people always think their own group is free of trolls because they’re never targeted by them.”

Interestingly enough, polling data indicates that Clinton supporters have been more aggressive than Sanders supporters on social media and the internet, while — not surprisingly — Trump supporters have been the most aggressive by a long shot. A poll supported by Craigslist.com founder Craig Newmark found that 57 percent of Americans say Trump supporters are very aggressive and/or threatening online, 30 percent say the same for Clinton supporters, and 16 percent for Sanders supporters (while 68 percent say Sanders supporters are not that aggressive, 52 percent for Clinton supporters, and 30 percent for Trump supporters).

Unfortunately, “troll” and “harassment” have become terms that are now impulsively hurled by Democratic partisans at anyone who criticizes or disputes their opinion or a claim they’ve made, whether on social media or in a publication. Accusing someone of harassment — even when the person is making a valid argument (admittedly, sometimes substantive arguments can be made in a rude or condescending manner, but is being rude or impolite harassment?) — is an easy way to avoid their argument and discredit them in the future.